State Capital Trial Set For `87

April 23, 1986|By Jim McNair, Business Writer

Ask a judge for a date and you might have to wait nine months for an appointment.

That`s how far into the future Palm Beach County Circuit Judge William Owen had to reach Tuesday for a trial date for the seven defendants in the State Capital Corp. fraud and racketeering case. Owen wanted to grant Assistant State Attorney Deborah Pucillo`s plea for a trial this fall, but conflicts on his calendar for the rest of the year forced him into 1987.

Thus Victor Bergelson and his associates at State Capital will wait until next January for a trial both sides expect to last six to eight weeks. On Tuesday, Bergelson, his two principal associates, State Capital President Gerald Schneiderman and Vice President Gary Allen, and two other employees pleaded innocent to a 60-count indictment originally handed down in an abbreviated form last August.

State Capital used to be a Boca Raton mortgage brokerage. It collected more than $43 million from investors from 1982 to 1985. Under investigation by the state Comptroller`s Office, State Capital and a dozen satellite companies filed for bankruptcy in February 1985. The court declared the companies insolvent, and trustees are still in the process of dividing up assets.

Bergelson was represented Tuesday by West Palm Beach lawyer David Roth and Nova University law professor Bruce Rogow. Rogow argued Bergelson`s motion for dismissal, citing numerous flaws and omissions in the indictment. One of his points was that the indictment fails to state that Bergelson personally misled investors, a contention that Pucillo rebutted by saying, ``Mr. Bergelson didn`t deal one on one with any particular investor. He probably never met an individual investor.``